Dorothee Viemann

Dorothee Viemann heads the Department of Translational Paediatrics at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She studied human medicine in Bochum, Strasbourg and Boston. She started her training as a pediatrician at the University Children's Hospital Kiel, then moved to the Institute of Immunology and Transfusion Medicine at the University of Lübeck for three years to start her scientific laboratory work. She continued her education as a pediatrician at the University Children's Hospital Münster, where she also acquired additional specializations in neonatology, infectiology and laboratory medicine. In 2008 she habilitated in pediatrics with the topic 'Role of endothelial signaling networks in inflammation'. Her clinical focus is on pediatric immunology, neonatology and infectiology. Her scientific work investigates the causes and therapeutic options of susceptibility to infections and immunological weaknesses of newborns and premature infants. Her research group elucidates in different projects the maturation processes in the innate immune system after birth and the molecular mechanisms of tolerance development.

PRESENTATION SUMMARY

Next Generation Pediatrics - from bed to bench and back

D. Viemann will give an example of how combining clinical and basic science expertise in neonatology challenged old knowledge and resulted into new concepts for understanding human biology and treatment strategies. The transition from the largely sterile intrauterine environment to the extrauterine world represents an enormous immunological challenge. For a long time, it was assumed that the restricted capacity of newborn infants to mount inflammatory responses towards microbial challenges explains the high risk of septic diseases in this age group. In recent years, evidence has been provided that this characteristic of the neonatal immune system is actually a meaningful physiologic state ensuring uneventful immune adaptation. It is based on specific, perinatally active cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow postnatal training of immunity without mounting overshooting inflammatory responses. In her talk, D. Viemann will highlight the current knowledge about how S100 alarmins control the immune system at the beginning of life in order to warrant the establishment of a balanced state of homeostasis with the environment in the newborn individual. This finding changed the concept of risk evaluation in newborn infants and initiated a preclinical trial exploring S100A8/A9 as sepsis-preventive treatment strategy in high-risk infants.

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